#Culture

“One clue is that the Japanese are more aware of synchrony than the average Westerner. Those tremendous Sumo wrestlers, for example, must synchronize their breathing before the referee will allow the match to begin, and the audience is fully aware of what is happening. In this same vein, Japanese who are conversing will frequently monitor their own breathing in order to stay in sync with their interlocutor!” (p 164)

“However, one of the contradictions of schooling is while it can be an institution of colonization, it also has the potential to decolonize (Smith 2000) and support the development of self-determination for Indigenous students and their communities.” (p 200)

“These colonialists saw themselves as continuing the work of the great seventeenth-century European thinkers who created the idea of an artificial society. In remote places, they constructed colonialism on their heritage of Eurocentrism, universality, and a strategy of difference. In the process, they either rejected or overlooked the Crown’s vision of treaty commonwealth in international law.” (p 169)

“In recent years, research on linguistic relativity has enjoyed a considerable resurgence, and much new evidence regarding the effects of language on thought has become available. This chapter reviews several lines of evidence regarding the effects of language on people’s representations of space, time, substances, and objects.” (¶ 4)

“Thus, this general approach, and our model as an instance of it, offer a possible resolution of one source of controversy surrounding the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: taking that hypothesis seriously need not entail a wholesale rejection of important universal components of human cognition.” (p 15)

“… English speakers prefer to talk about duration in terms of length (e.g., ‘That was a short talk,’ ‘The meeting didn’t take long‘), while Spanish and Greek speakers prefer to talk about time in terms of amount, relying more on words like ‘much’ ‘big’, and ‘little’ rather than ‘short’ and ‘long’ …” (p 123-124)

“But what is easy to say in one language may be harder to say in a second, and this may make it easier or more natural or more common for speakers of the first language to think in a certain way than for speakers of the second language to do so. A concept or category may be more available in some linguistic communities than in others.” (¶ 39)

“Eventually, of course, American science became an active force for racial egalitarianism, but allegedly the shift began only in the late 1920s, reaching its peak in the 1930s, when Nazi brutalities against European Jewry made the inherent dangers of racism more clear. In sum, American scientists were Johnny-come-latelies in advocating racial justice for Negroes.” (p 50)

“The fact is, an enormous body of cultural and intellectual wealth was lost irretrievably in the course of the European colonization of the New World and the South. It was lost utterly and without being noticed, primarily because it was mental wealth, appreciable only through the language which was lost with it.” (p 193)

“This principle is illustrated by the way in which we have taken our own biological clocks, moved them outside ourselves, and then treated the extensions as though they represented the only reality. … Because of extension transference, the schedule is the reality and people and their needs are not considered.” (p 131)